Our forced errors don’t justify our unforced errors

In tennis, when a player is put into a situation where it is almost impossible to hit a shot back into the court, player has committed a forced error. Of course, the more common usage is unforced error, when the player has the opportunity to play the ball into the court but mistakenly it into the net or out of the court.

During our life, we all are put in situations where the errors may seem to be unavoidable. For example, a sudden and forceful temptation may overwhelm us, but that doesn’t necessary mean that we seek temptation to indulge in.

While forced error and unforced error are at one level two distinct categories, at another level they can both be a result of continuity. That means when we succumb to one thing, we feel so disgusted and disappointed with ourselves, that we just fall completely.

If we could keep things focused, and doing one thing at a time, then even if we make a mistake we can stop as soon as we realize the mistake, and we can stop at the first mistake instead of going into the second. That is what we need in our day to day life. To the extent we can channel things progressively, to that extent we can move forwards

In Gita (6.6) it states that the mind when uncontrolled can be our worst enemy, when controlled it can be our best friend. This implies that the mind may sometimes drive us crazy because it finds it impossible to restrain some of the things that we wish to do, but if we can’t restrain at that level the mind may push us down and make us fall completely. We don’t have to do that.

We may not be able to prevent a fall, but we can prevent discouragement after the fall. We can prevent self-loathing after the fall; we can prevent rationalization and perpetuation of the fall. Instead if we turn our eyes from ourselves and our standards to Krishna, and we strive to please Krishna and think that Krishna’s love for us is still unfailing by his mercy, and we strive to serve him as much as we can in our situation, then we can overcome the situation.